In my office, the moment I get real close to somebody that person would either get a transfer or quit. I have seen this happen so many times – with Yashwanth, Ravi, Jimmy, Senior, Chaina, Gambhir, Anshul, Shruthi, Sharat, Kajal, Sajeev, Johny, Kumz, Jose, Venky…Last month the curse crossed the road…Srini, a friend who works in an office near mine quit. This post is dedicated to him (and of course, to all the friends listed above).

It was Srini who introduced me to the world of ‘inspired posters’. And posters kept me going, perhaps more than anything else, through 2009. It also took up more time than anything else in 2009 – I became am IMPA addict, downloaded 15 years worth of posters, spent hours peering at thumbnails trying to identify ‘stuff that looks like other stuff’ (that explains the glasses), man, did I have a good time…

One of Srini’s early posts was about art-inspired posters. That sent me scurrying to my art books collection. I did find a few (perhaps farfetched) similarities…

Archimboldo

David Brinkley

William Hogarth

I also stumbled upon a painting by Degas, Spartan Girls Provoking Boys. Bingo! Doesnt that look like Goya’s famous massacre painting.

Edgar Degas. Spartan Girls Provoking Boys. c.1860-62

Francisco Goya. The Third of May. 1814. (flipped for comparison)

Googling for Goya brought me to the blind flaneur who had posted on Goya. I left a comment about the apparent similarities in composition, and the flaneur (love him) wrote on his site – “Babu has a discerning eye, and his website documents many resonances in contemporary visual rhetoric”. Wow, that sounds much better than ‘stuff looks like other stuff’.